


Peserve Your Memories

by kscribbles



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s02e09 The Satan Pit, Episode: s02e11 Fear Her, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Romance, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 03:51:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kscribbles/pseuds/kscribbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stroll down snogging memory lane, if you like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peserve Your Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Written for challenge 7 over at the lj comm, writerinatardis (and won! Hurray!). The theme was _take a moment that happened on screen and twist it around so that it has a romantic element to it_. This started with that squeeing hug at the end of _The Satan Pit_ and grew from there. ;) Unbeta'd. Written in 2009.

“Rose,” his voice whispered against her hair.

She stirred, not even remotely surprised that he wasn’t letting her sleep. It was always when she was at her most exhausted that he seemed to be at his most restless.

Spending an entire day looking for missing children, figuring out squiggly pencil creatures, saving a human child and the alien Isolus child–not to mention saving the _whole world_ and worrying herself half to death over the Doctor–tired her out completely.

He, as usual, was unfazed. And after they returned to the TARDIS from the Olympic festivities and they engaged in some celebratory lovemaking, during which he’d thoroughly exhausted her second wind–not even that had much effect. A girl could get insulted.

She was tempted not to answer, to pretend she was still asleep, but he’d know otherwise. And anyway, she was wondering if maybe now he was ready to talk about what he meant earlier, in London, when he talked about a storm coming. He’d shaken off that mood quickly, but she was still concerned.

She rolled over to face him and found him lying very still in the dim light, looking at her most intently.

“Was asleep,” she mumbled, and gave him a week glare.

“Were you?” he said, too innocently, sliding a palm down her arm absently, holding her gaze. He looked ready to say more, so she waited, but he didn’t continue.

“Well?” she prodded when she began to grow antsy. “Out with it, you woke me for a reason.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“No,” said resolutely. “Still tired. Talk to me.”

He huffed, then rolled from his side to his back and heaved a sigh towards the ceiling. “It’s nothing, really. Forget it.”

“Um…” she began, only to be cut off as he suddenly flipped back onto his side to face her again.

“Only I was curious. I wanted to know what you thought. But it’s silly, so really never mind.”

“What?” she asked, still not entirely used to how he could be both exasperating and completely adorable at the same time.

“I was lying here, listening to you snore–”

“Oi!” she protested, “I don’t snore!”

“No, ‘course you don’t. But if you did, it would be really quite a feminine, dainty snore, very soothing to listen to, actually. In theory. I’m guessing.”

She put more effort into her glare this time.

“Aaaaanyway,” he drawled, “I was just lying here, in complete silence, thinking about… you. Particularly about kissing you.”

“So you did wake me for–”

“No, not really. I mean I was thinking about it, the act, not that I wanted to _do_ it just then.”

She furrowed her brow at him.

“Not that I don’t either. For future reference, I do, almost always want to, but... Erm.” He squirmed, fiddling with the duvet. “But that’s not what I was thinking. I was wondering about our first kiss.”

“Our first kiss? Why?” It was about the last thing she expected him to bring up, even when he started talking about kissing. Something inside her warmed at the thought of him contemplating such intimate memories.

“Because, well… It’s a bit open to interpretation, isn’t it?”

“I…”

He sat up a bit, leaning on an elbow, as he went into ‘figure it out’ mode. “Right, okay, let’s examine. A stroll down snogging memory lane, if you like. First possible first,” he held up one finger, counting, “when I was all big ears and leather and you were all… glowing. I told you about that later, but you don’t really remember it.”

She didn’t, except for vague, dreamlike snatches of images. She sometimes felt a bit cheated, that the only kiss she’d shared with that Doctor was one she couldn’t clearly recall.

He continued. “So that hardly counts. Second potential first kiss,” he held up another finger. “On New Earth, in the hospital, possessed by Cassandra. Oh I like that, makes it sound like it was a crime. Which I guess it was, of sorts. That psychograft she possessed you with? Definitely illegal. And snogging me, well, _is_ illegal on some planets. Remind me not to take you to those–.”

“Doctor,” she said gently, bringing him back from the tangent she saw him veering towards.

“Right. Well, second kiss, against your will, and I, knowing of course something was off, barely participated. So we can’t count that one.”

She _did_ remember that kiss. Remembered that even frightened and trapped in her own brain, she guffawed at Cassandra’s audacity. She remembered his fury when he thought it was the cat nuns tampering with her mind. And she definitely remembered how she could still taste him on her lips when she was back in control of her body. He was right, though, that kiss didn’t count.

“All right, then. Next?” She still wasn’t sure why he wanted to talk about this, but it was a subject of infinite interest, her curiosity was peaked, and she wasn’t the least bit sleepy anymore. And the next kiss they shared was the big one.

“Next…” he thought for a moment, and then held up a third finger. “On Krop Tor.”

His answer surprised her. “ _On_ Krop Tor? You sure you don’t mean–?”

“Nope. On. On the planet. In the sanctuary base. On the helmet.”

Oh, _that_ kiss. The one she’d bestowed without thinking and he’d accepted without blinking, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Because they had been too worried about each other to care overmuch about those pesky boundaries they’d still had in place. It was such a small action, but maybe it was the kiss that had paved the path for what came later. Maybe that should be their official first kiss, then–if that’s what they were figuring out. It would be just like them to have it be that kiss, with only one pair of lips, on a planet that no longer exists because it got sucked into a black hole.

“So?” he interrupted her reverie.

“I don’t know yet, let’s hear all the contenders.”

“There’s only the one left. And I’m pretty sure it takes the cake. Just a little while later, after my manly, heroic, dashing rescue of you all on that otherwise doomed rocket ship. You ran in, we hugged, I snogged you senseless.”

She laughed. “Senseless?” She wasn’t going to tell him how absolutely right he was.

“Yup. You stumbled, remember?”

“Because you’d been spinning me around!”

“No,” he corrected. “I spun you a bit, happy to see you, then I put you down, _then_ I snogged you, for approximately 82 seconds, give or take a few pauses for air. _Then_ you stumbled, when I let you go and said I was going to change out of the spacesuit.”

She thought back fondly, the time that had passed since then heightening the good memories and dulling the remembered fear. He’d only been gone a minute or two before returning, perfectly groomed and composed, in the same outfit he’d been wearing earlier. But while he’d been gone, her mind had been racing, thinking about the trauma they’d both been through, what he’d just done, and what he was doing at the time–changing.

“Ah,” he said when she stayed quiet. “Were you having naughty naked thoughts already, Rose Tyler? Naughty naked time came later, as I recall; no question about _that_ first time.”

“I wasn’t having any thoughts at all. You snogged me senseless, remember?” She poked him lightly in the chest for emphasis.

“I remember,” he said, his voice dipping low. He closed the few inches between them and vividly reminded them both what that kiss had been like. Only they were horizontal this time. And wearing considerably less clothing.

She pushed him away after a few moments, breathless and giggling. Then she wrapped her arms around him again.

 

“You still haven’t told me what this is all about, you know.”

“Do we agree, then? About our first kiss?” he asked.

“Rose Tyler, with the Doctor (in the spacesuit), on the TARDIS. Yeah. So why’d you want to know?”

He looked away briefly, like he was wondering how much to tell her. “I was cataloguing memories,” he said softly. “The good things. ‘Kissing Rose’ is certainly a favourite category of memory, so I had to have the correct starting point to catalogue them properly.”

Again that warmth spread through her, knowing that this was about as close as he ever came to talking about his feelings for her.

“But,” she asked, “catalogue? Why?”

“It makes memories easier to sort through. Big brain like mine, nearly a millennium of experiences? There’s a lot going on in here.” He tapped his own temple in a gesture that suddenly and fiercely reminded her of her first Doctor.

She tightened her arms around him, but said nothing.

“If I go through some trauma or something, say regeneration–”

She gasped at the thought, remembering what he said earlier, during the fireworks. Was that what all this was about? She tried to calm the panic that was threatening to rise in her. It was too soon. He’d not even had this body a year yet.

“Do you know something about–?”

“No,” he quickly soothed. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan on going anywhere, Rose. Just that… thoughts can get jumbled about in extreme circumstances. And when the time comes, it will be easier to access my memories if I do this every so often. Just doing a bit of maintenance, really. Tinkering with the TARDIS means I have to get up, get dressed, and leave this warm bed. Memory cataloguing I can do right here, next to you, while you sleep. Where, by the way, you’re doing the same thing, only unconsciously.” He placed a lingering kiss on her forehead as if in emphasis.

“Does that one go in the catalogue?” she asked, smiling, trying to rid herself of any thoughts about something awful happening to him.

“Hmmm,” he considered. “Subcategory. Only one pair of lips. Like with the helmet. Or any time I do this.” He shoved her gently on to her back and slid hid body over hers, and then peppered her neck, throat, collarbone and shoulder with kisses in quick succession.

“Your mind,” she said, giggling again with delight and sliding her fingers into his hair, “must be a very complicated place.”

“You have no idea,” he mumbled against her skin.

She didn’t want to think of him alone on this big ship with nothing but what was in his own head for company, as he must have been before he met her, as he would be when she was gone. While she was around, she’d fill his thoughts with as much joy as she could.

“So tell me,” she said, manoeuvring her hand between them and making him gasp in surprise and pleasure. “What would you file _this_ under?”

 

FIN

* * *

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